Civilized Society’s War With Islam

Around and around we go. Violence and death of innocents on Islamic soil seems to be a perpetual phenomenon. The most recent round of senseless violence was said to have been sparked by the surfacing of a sophomoric YouTube video that pokes fun at Muhammad.

A handful of Muslims in the eastern Libya city of Benghazi became so enraged by the incident that they attacked the U.S. consulate, killing U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens along with three other Americans.

It didn’t bother the executioners that Stevens had fought beside Libyans to free Libya from dictator Moammar Gadhafi, who had ruled the country for 34 years.

Also, protesters in Egypt scaled the walls of the U.S. embassy in Cairo and replaced an American flag with an Islamic banner. Again, Islamic extremists have problems with their short-term memory. It was the United States that supported the revolution in Egypt that removed that nation’s dictator, Hosni Mubarak.

Those acts were the first such assaults on U.S. diplomatic facilities in either country. There was a flurry of excuses for the murder of Americans whose only sin was trying to build Islamic civilizations in a region that refuses to become civilized.

Let me get back to that YouTube film whose very existence justifies a death sentence even to those who had nothing to do with its production.

You see, the video goes so far as to mock Islam’s holy prophet.

I don’t know if some of you watch the TV show “Family Guy” which FOX, of all networks, produces. It sometimes makes fun of Jesus Christ. In one episode Christ is shown as a hippie working at a used record store. That hasn’t resulted in attacks on the show’s creator, Seth MacFarlane, by Christians. Call it free speech and the Western world’s ability to laugh at itself even when it comes to our religious beliefs. We certainly don’t go on murderous rampages every time our sensibilities are hurt. That is not the way for much of Islam.

Further evidence of violent Islamic tendencies was provided last week when al-Qaida’s affiliate in North Africa urged Muslims in the region to kill U.S. government representatives.

“We encourage all Muslims to continue to demonstrate and escalate their protests and to kill their (American) ambassadors and representatives or to expel them to cleanse our land from their wickedness,” read the statement from al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb.

The group also called the killing of Stevens “the best gift you (can) give to his arrogant and unjust administration.”

There’s more. Also last week, a Taliban-allied insurgent group claimed responsibility for a suicide attack that killed at least 12 people, including eight South Africans, in Afghanistan. The group said it was in response to the YouTube video.

A spokesman for Islamic militant group Hizb-i-Islami said a 22-year-old woman named Fatima carried out the attack. She drove a car packed with 660 pounds of explosives into a van on a road leading to the Kabul International Airport.

Suicide attacks by women are rare in Afghanistan — maybe because it’s a sin for a woman to drive a automobiles.

“The anti-Islam film hurt our religious sentiments and we cannot tolerate it,” spokesman Haroon Zarghhon told The Associated Press. “There had been several young men who wanted to take revenge, but Fatima also volunteered and we wanted to give a chance to a girl … to tell the world we cannot ignore any anti-Islam attack.”

That’s lucky for Fatima — although, I am not too sure what she is going to do with the 72 virgins that are waiting for her.

Radical jihadists can’t even come up with original reasons to be anti-American; they have to spend their days scanning YouTube to find some insult. Don’t these Islamic believers have better things to do, like build schools and roads? Yet it was determined that murder had to be meted out because some idiot made fun of Muhammad.

Isn’t it time for the West to wash our hands of Islam? A growing part of Islam, regardless of whether President Barack Obama will admit it, is at war with the United States and Western society. During the Cold War, the United States faced rational and educated leaders of the Kremlin. The opposition leaders in this war are crazed religious fanatics who have already demonstrated they are crazy enough to blow up themselves — and often many innocent Muslims who happen to be in the way — because they have nothing better to do than to kill Westerners.

You can blame it on the brain trust of Islamic militants. One man that helped shape al-Qaida’s philosophy was Sayyid Imam al-Sharif, also known as Dr. Fadl.

In an article for The New Yorker, Lawrence Wright relayed Dr. Fadl’s doctrine:

Fadl contends that the rulers of Egypt and other Arab countries are apostates of Islam. “The infidel’s rule, his prayers, and the prayers of those who pray behind him are invalid,” Fadl decrees. “His blood is legal.” He declares that Muslims have a duty to wage jihad against such leaders; those who submit to an infidel ruler are themselves infidels, and doomed to damnation. The same punishment awaits those who participate in democratic elections. “I say to Muslims in all candor that secular, nationalist democracy opposes your religion and your doctrine, and in submitting to it you leave God’s book behind,” he writes. Those who labor in government, the police, and the courts are infidels, as is anyone who works for peaceful change; religious war, not political reform, is the sole mandate. Even devout believers walk a tightrope over the abyss. “A man may enter the faith in many ways, yet be expelled from it by just one deed,” Fadl cautions. Anyone who believes otherwise is a heretic and deserves to be slaughtered.

So here we stand in 2012; the Middle Ages intersect the Internet.

Obama continues to waste billions of dollars in aid to Islamic nations — even countries like strife-riddled Egypt which collects $1.5 billion a year from Washington. The Obama Administration played a crucial role in the overthrow of Mubarak only to witness the ascension to power of the latest Egyptian despots who are even worse than Mubarak. A recent headline from the Daily Beast said it all: “Obama’s Foolish Embrace of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood.”

Mr. President: If by chance you get re-elected, please change your policies regarding Islam. Try not to take a society out of the Stone Age. Too many believers in Muhammad (like your father was) are committed to killing those who have done nothing other than invest themselves in trying to bring a better future to a rundown region which is becoming the globe’s gutter.

Hopefully, Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney will prevail in November. If so, he must understand he has an undeclared war on his hands with much of Islam. The Muslim Brotherhood is gaining murderous momentum throughout the Mideast — especially in Egypt. It controls the Suez Canal, a choke point for petroleum and other essential trade.

To date, the Muslim Brotherhood has not renounced the doctrine of its late founder, Hassan al-Banna: “It is the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its law on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet.”